Thursday, January 30, 2014

The NOAA oceanographer Gregory C. Johnson summarized the IPCC report in a very special way. You can see the result on Sightline Daily. Anna Fahey has a nice introductory text. She writes:

What if we could communicate the essence of (the IPCC and the summary for policy makers) in plain language and pictures? Well, that’s just what one
Northwest oceanographer has done. He’s distilled the entire report into
19 illustrated haiku.
The result is stunning, sobering, and brilliant. It’s poetry. It’s a
work of art. But it doubles as clear, concise, powerful talking points
and a compelling visual guide.

Friday, January 17, 2014

Part 2:

The deforestation-climate change idea seems to have been very popular and much discussed in early 19th century Canada, although the links to phlogiston were dropped as Lavoisier’s revolution in chemistry led towards our current theories of heat. James Flemming and Hans (von Storch of this blog) have discussed deforestation and climate theories in the US and Germany. As most of my work has been on Canadian observers, my examples will come from there.

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

The Long History of Changing the Climate

Part 1

Vicky Slonosky

Like many others before me, I’ve gone from being interested in the content of historical climate records for scientific analysis to also being fascinated by their context, and by the history of the idea of anthropogenic climate change found in these documents. The idea of humans changing the climate seems to have been around for a long time in the New World. Actually, the idea of humans changing the climate seems to have been around for a long time, period. Clarence Glacken traced the idea of human-induced climate change back Classical Antiquity, to shortly after Aristotle. The idea of humans changing the climate by modifying the environment winds its way through Roman historians, medieval monks, Enlightenment philosophers, and 19th century meteorologists.

Sustainable use of KLIMAZWIEBEL

The participants of KLIMAZWIEBEL are made of a diverse group of people interested in the climate issue; among them people, who consider the man-made climate change explanation as true, and others, who consider this explanation false. We have scientists and lay people; natural scientists and social scientists. People with different cultural and professional backgrounds. This is a unique resource for a relevant and inspiring discussion. This resource needs sustainable management by everybody. Therefore we ask to pay attention to these rules:

1. We do not want to see insults, ad hominem comments, lengthy tirades, ongoing repetitions, forms of disrespect to opponents. Also lengthy presentation of amateur-theories are not welcomed. When violating these rules, postings will be deleted.2. Please limit your contributions to the issues of the different threads.3. Please give your name or use an alias - comments from "anonymous" should be avoided.4. When you feel yourself provoked, please restrain from ranting; instead try to delay your response for a couple of hours, when your anger has evaporated somewhat.5. If you wan to submit a posting (begin a new thread), send it to either Eduardo Zorita or Hans von Storch - we publish it within short time. But please, only articles related to climate science and climate policy.6. Use whatever language you want. But maybe not a language which is rarely understood in Hamburg.